Ravens hold off 49ers' surge, win Super Bowl XLVII

Baltimore overcomes power outage, blown lead to beat Niners 34-31

Chris Graythen / Getty Images

Joe Flacco (left) of the Baltimore Ravens celebrates after throwing a touchdown pass in the first quarter against the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl XLVII at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Feb. 3, 2013 in New Orleans, La.
NBCSports.com news services
updated 5:53 p.m. ET Feb. 3, 2013

NEW ORLEANS - The Baltimore Ravens fended off a second half surge from the San Francisco 49ers and overcame a 30-plus minute power outage to win Super Bowl XLVII 34-31.

Ravens QB Joe Flacco threw three touchdowns — all in the first half — and Baltimore held off San Francisco's charge following the long second half delay.

QB Colin Kaepernick's 15-yard touchdown cut Baltimore's lead to 31-29 with 9:57 to play, but the 49ers failed at a two-point conversion attempt that would have tied the game.

Ravens kicker Justin Tucker hit a 38-yard field goal -- his second of the game -- to extend Baltimore's lead back to five points at 34-29. A late intentional safety by the Ravens with four seconds to play made it 34-31, which is how the game ended.

Shortly after Jacoby Jones took the 2nd half kickoff back 108 yards to extend the Baltimore Ravens' lead to 28-6 early in the third quarter, but then the lights went out at the Superdome.

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The power outage completely shifted momentum. Once the lights came back on, the 49ers turned it on as well. They drove 80 yards in just over three minutes, with a 31-yard pass from Kaepernick to Michael Crabtree cuting Baltimore's lead to 28-13.

San Francisco followed that up with a six-yard TD run by Frank Gore. The 49ers started the drive on the Baltimore 20 after Ted Ginn Jr.'s 32-yard return. David Akers hit a 34-yard field goal to cut Baltimore's lead to just five.

Kicker Justin Tucker's 19-yard field goal gave the Ravens some relief, extending the lead back to 31-23. But Kaepernick's TD with 9:57 left in the game put the Niners within two points.

Flacco started the game off hot. His record-tying 11th TD of the postseason was a 56-yard bomb to Jones with 1:45 left in the first half. Flacco finished the postseason without throwing an interception.

Slideshow

Super Bowl blackout
Take a visual tour of Super Bowl XLVII's blackout in the Superdome

Akers converted his second field goal of the game as time expired in the first half to put the 49ers within two scores.

Baltimore caught a break early when the 49ers were called for a penalty on third down, extending the Ravens' drive. On the next play, Joe Flacco found Anquan Boldin for a 13-yard touchdown to give the Ravens a 7-0 lead.

Akers converted a 36-yard field goal with 4:03 left in the first quarter to cut Baltimore's lead to four.

Flacco threw his second touchdown pass with 7:15 to go in the first half to extend Baltimore's lead. It was Flacco's 10th TD of the postseason; he has not thrown any interceptions.

Kaepernick threw an interception immediately following Flacco's second touchdown. Ed Reed came up with the ball on the other end, tying a record with his ninth all-time postseason pick.

The Ravens, however, got nothing out of the turnover. Coach John Harbaugh called a fake field goal on fourth and nine, Tucker's run came up a yard short.

The Most Wanted Gun in America

Steve Ruark for The New York Times

At the Pasadena Pawn and Gun Shop in Maryland, customers can join a waiting list to buy an AR-15-style rifle. “It’s kind of fashionable,” Frank Loane Sr., the shop’s proprietor, said of the gun.

By NATASHA SINGER

February 2, 2013

PASADENA, Md.

THE phone rings again at Pasadena Pawn and Gun, and a familiar question comes down the line: “Got any ARs?”

The answer is no. Pasadena Pawn and Gun, a gun retailer and pawnshop 15 miles south of Baltimore, is pretty much sold out of America’s most wanted gun, the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Since the massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December, the AR-15, the military-style weapon that the police say was used in the shootings, has been selling fast here and across the nation.

Before Newtown, the rifles sold for about $1,100, on average. Now some retailers charge twice that. At Pasadena Pawn, on the wall behind glass counters of handguns, are three dozen or so AR-15-style rifles. Dangling from nearly every one is a tag that says “Sold.”

“The AR-15, it’s kind of fashionable,” says Frank Loane Sr., the proprietor. His shop has a revolving waiting list for the rifles, and a handful of people are now on it. “The young generation likes them, the assault-looking guns.”

On one level, what is happening here and elsewhere simply reflects supply and demand. The gun industry has spent decades stoking demand for the AR-15 and rifles like it. Now, after the mass killings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, President Obama wants to reduce the supply. He has asked Congress for tougher controls, including a ban on what are commonly called “military-style assault weapons”; the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on gun violence last Wednesday. Many enthusiasts are rushing to buy one of the rifles now, in case the president prevails.

But how did gun makers stir up the demand for these particular guns in the first place? The answer is a story of shrewd advertising, aggressive marketing and savvy manufacturing — a virtual recasting of the place of guns in American life. With speed and skill, firearms manufacturers transformed a niche market for the AR-15 and similar rifles into a fast-growing profit center.

When certain rifles and features were banned under federal law from 1994 to 2004, gun makers tweaked their manufacturing specifications — and introduced more AR-15-style rifles than ever. With ads celebrating the rifle’s military connections, they lured a new and eager audience to weapons that, not long ago, few serious gun enthusiasts would buy. 

February 3, 2013
	Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times Tammy Hadley of Waterford, Me., a quality manager at Windham Weaponry, checked parts during the manufacturing of an AR-15-style rifle.

It might seem remarkable, given the national conversation about gun control, but guns are a relatively small business in the United States. Sales of commercial guns and ammunition — as opposed to those sold to the military and police — amounted to about $5 billion in 2012. That’s less than half of the profits that Apple earned in the final 13 weeks of last year. But despite the headlines, and partly because of them, commercial gun sales are growing. Last year, they were up 16 percent industrywide, according to estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade association. Semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 are responsible for a significant share of that growth. 

The 2003 issue of Guns & Ammo, featuring an article on ARs. The gun industry has spent years stoking demand for the weapon.

By now, many Americans probably recognize the AR-15, whether or not they recognize the term. Unlike its military counterpart, the M-16, the civilian AR-15 cannot spray a continuous stream of ammunition with one pull of the trigger. But, as a semiautomatic, it can fire individual bullets as fast as the trigger can be squeezed. By design, it looks and feels like something commandos might carry. That is part of its appeal, and of manufacturers’ pitch.

On one level, marketing military-style weapons to civilians is not so different from pitching professional sports equipment to high-school athletes. Garry James, the senior field editor at Guns & Ammo, says a military pedigree inspires consumer confidence in a gun’s reliability.

“Credibility of performance is what appeals to the firearms enthusiast,” Mr. James wrote in an e-mail.

Yet marketing combat-derived weapons to civilians is a risky business, particularly now. The industry itself has promoted the guns by using battle imagery and words like “assault” and “combat.” Bushmaster Firearms, a leading maker of AR-15-style guns, and whose rifles have been used in several mass shootings, features the Bushmaster ACR, short for adaptive combat rifle, on its Web site. “Forces of opposition, bow down,” part of the site says. All the same, gun makers say customers buy these weapons with peaceable intentions.

The AR-15 isn’t the first military-style weapon to gain a consumer following. After World War II, some people bought surplus German service rifles made by Mauser and repurposed them for hunting and competitive shooting. But the selling of the AR-15 represents the first mass marketing of a military-style semiautomatic rifle made by a number of different gun makers. Its success has led to an increasing militarization of the entire consumer firearms market, says Tom Diaz, a gun industry researcher and gun control advocate. 

A 1983 issue of Guns & Ammo.

“It speaks to the fact that there are a lot of young men in the U.S. who will never be in the military but feel that male compulsion to warriorhood,” says Mr. Diaz, the author of “The Last Gun,” a forthcoming book on the industry. “Owning an assault weapon is a passport to that.”

A REMINGTON MODEL 870, a classic pump-action shotgun with an all-steel receiver and walnut stock, sits on a brown gingham tablecloth along with a slice of apple pie, a mug of coffee and an issue of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

This is how guns were marketed in 1981. That year, the Remington 870 was featured on the back cover of the July issue of Guns & Ammo, in an ad that emphasized quality and durability. “The 870,” the ad read. “Still as American as apple pie.”

The front cover of the same issue showed something very different: a photograph of two gleaming black rifles, with the cover line: “The New Breed of Assault Rifle.” 

A 1981 issue of Guns & Ammo.

That breed’s military antecedent, the M-16, developed by Colt, had been an American staple of the Vietnam War; soldiers had nicknamed it the “black rifle” for its anodized coating. But, by the 1980s, with the war ended and military orders waning, the industry was eager to find a market for the civilian AR-15. Many gun makers were under pressure as traditional customers like hunters were aging and young Americans were taking up other pursuits like computers and video games. Net domestic gun sales fell from more than five million guns in 1980 to fewer than four million in 1987, according to a report in 2000 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Some gun makers responded by advertising handguns for women. Others found success in adapting combat weapons for civilians. Colt, which had introduced an updated version of the M-16 for the military, began selling a similarly tweaked AR-15 for the consumer market. Some parts manufacturers started selling AR-15 parts to consumers who wanted to piece together their own rifles. Other companies imported semiautomatic Uzis, a version of the Israel Defense Force weapon, for civilian use.

The look and the gas-powered mechanisms of the new black rifles offended some gun enthusiasts, who viewed them as mere high-powered toys. Even magazines like Guns & Ammo, the Vogue of firearms, had to acknowledge the initial wariness of some readers. 

In 1981, an ad for the Remington 870 shotgun emphasized quality and durability.

“The dyed-in-the-wool deer hunter watching his domain being infiltrated by these black and gray guns assumes these ‘new generation’ hunters are merely fantasizing ‘war games’ and are playing ‘soldier,’ ” Art Blatt, a writer at Guns & Ammo, said in that 1981 issue. Mr. Blatt, now deceased, covered all types of firearms for the magazine and was himself a shotgun enthusiast.

But the gun media found ways to appeal to readers. In that 1981 article on the Colt AR-15 and similar firearms, Mr. Blatt invoked the rifles’ military pedigree, “spawned in the crucible of war.” He spoke of their military-level durability, speed and accuracy. In a 1983 cover article on “Bushmaster assault systems,” he noted that in tests on a human-size silhouette target 10 yards away, a Bushmaster with a full 30-round magazine could be “rapidly emptied into the lethal zone.”

The new rifles used ammunition — .223 caliber — that was considered too small for big-game hunting in most states. Before long, consumers were buying the guns for small game — “varmint hunting” — as well as recreational shooting called “plinking.”

Some gun writers were not entirely comfortable with the rifles. In his article on Bushmaster, Mr. Blatt wrote that the guns seemed “a mite too powerful and penetrating” for home defense. He recommended the Bushmaster for police SWAT teams “in close-quarter encounters with evildoers.”

Despite such reservations, the AR-15-style rifle — which is fast, modern, ergonomically designed, relatively easy to handle and produces little recoil — soon found a wide audience, be it Vietnam War veterans who had used the military version or first-time gun buyers.

“End users with minimal firearms exposure can learn to quickly become safe and proficient with the platform regardless of prior firearms experience,” Mr. James, the editor at Guns & Ammo, wrote in an e-mail. 

 

In 2007, Guns & Ammo called the AR "America's battle rifle."

Another feature of the AR-15 is that it can be easily personalized and accessorized.

“You can take the whole gun apart and replace any part you want to without special tools, without knowing a whole lot,” says Tim McDermott, a range officer at the Personal Defense and Handgun Safety Center in Raleigh, N.C. “They are Legos for guys.”

IN 1976, Richard Dyke, a Korean War veteran, bought a bankrupt gun maker in Bangor, Me., for $241,000. That business grew into Bushmaster Firearms, which quickly earned a following after target shooters began winning competitions with its rifles.

“That did give us prestige,” Mr. Dyke said in an interview with The New York Times in 2011. “Then we won law-enforcement contracts and started getting recognition in the trade press.” (Mr. Dyke later sold Bushmaster and started another gun company, Windham Weaponry. He declined to comment for this article).

Then, in 1994, the AR-15 hit a speed bump. Congress passed a 10-year ban on “assault weapons,” which legislators defined as semiautomatic rifles that included two or more specific features, like pistol-type handle grips and metal mounts, called bayonet lugs, to which bayonets could be attached. People who already owned such rifles were allowed to keep them. 

An ad for Stag Arms, a maker of AR-15-style rifles, noted a law-enforcement pedigree.

The ban made the rifles only more desirable for some consumers. To meet the demand, gun makers removed prohibited features, like bayonet lugs, and marketed them as legal alternatives.

“It was unfortunately an industrywide event where companies were openly bragging about their ability to sell guns in circumvention of the law,” says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a research and gun-control advocacy group in Washington.

The industry produced an estimated one million modified AR-15-style rifles during the ban — more than it had produced of the original version in the previous decade — says Gary G. Mehalik, a former marketing executive at the National Shooting Sports Foundation and at Taurus USA, a handgun maker in Miami. He denied that gun makers circumvented the law.

“If you drive 40 miles an hour in a 40-mile-an-hour zone, are you exploiting a loophole or following the law?” Mr. Mehalik asked.

After the ban’s expiration, gun makers simply restored the once-prohibited features. Some companies added muscle to the rifles — to enthusiastic reviews in the gun media.

“Scoffed at for being a ‘poodle shooter,’ the AR has grown fangs and is now available in a variety of calibers including big bores,” said an article in Guns & Ammo in 2005. “Today’s ARs ride in an increasing number of patrol cars,” the article said, adding that the guns’ military counterparts “are turning live terrorists into dead ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Combat allusions increased in ads as well. In a 2008 issue of Guns & Ammo, an ad for Stag Arms, a leading AR-15-style rifle and parts maker, showed a photo of two policemen wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, carrying the black rifles. “Stag Arms rifles meet the highest standards of engineering precision and reliability,” the ad said. “Just ask these guys.”

An article about Stag Arms in the same issue described one of the company’s models as “a southpaw’s dream” and invoked “the role this rifle plays in combat.”

Mark Malkowski, the president of Stag Arms, declined to comment.

Mr. James, of Guns & Ammo, said his magazine devoted many articles to AR-15-style rifles because manufacturers over time had improved the guns and introduced a variety of accessories, thereby attracting readers’ attention.

“Guns & Ammo’s role in popularizing the platform is purely a function of reader interest and the platform’s unique adaptability for a wide range of sporting purposes,” Mr. James wrote.

Pressured by investors in the wake of Newtown, Cerberus Capital Management, a private investment firm that bought Bushmaster from Mr. Dyke and has built the nation’s largest gun company, the Freedom Group, announced that it would sell its gun interests. It has yet to find a buyer.

A WOMAN wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses and a make-my-day smirk aims a hefty black semiautomatic Benelli rifle at an unseen predator. “This baby handles prairie varmints or the kind that come uninvited through your door,” the Benelli Web site says of the rifle. “Chosen by the United States Marine Corps.”

Gun makers seem to be competing to roll out the next civilianized combat weapon. Today, one trendsetter in handguns is a new generation of semiautomatic pistols with large-capacity magazines and other features. An ad for a pistol from Taurus USA promoted it as “the extreme-duty next-generation handgun, created for Special Operations Personnel.”

Such marketing aside, the industry disavows a link between military-style guns and gun violence. Industry representatives, like the National Rifle Association, often fault news outlets for demonizing and mislabeling the rifles.

“As you should know, but your non-gun-owning friends probably don’t, the guns our opponents call ‘assault weapons’ are not ‘high-powered’ when compared to other firearms,” Chris W. Cox, the executive director of the N.R.A.’s Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in a 2009 article in American Rifleman, a monthly N.R.A. publication.

Some marketing executives take a different view, suggesting that the industry include warnings the way alcohol and cigarette ads do. In a blog post last month on Adage.com titled “In a Culture of Mass Shootings, the Ad Industry Shares the Blame,” David Morse, a contributor, recommended that gun makers develop “more responsible ways” to present their products.

“Should we be holding manufacturers accountable?” Mr. Morse, the C.E.O. of New American Dimensions, a multicultural marketing research firm, asked in a phone interview. “The marketing messages do share in the blame because the messages are picked up and misinterpreted by the wrong kind of people.”

'American Sniper' author Chris Kyle fatally shot at Texas gun range

Chris Kyle, 38, a former Navy SEAL sniper and author, was shot and killed at a Texas gun range Saturday, along with another man, Chad Littlefield, and police have arrested a suspect, Eddie Routh, 25. Mark Schnyder of KXAS reports and TODAY's Lester Holt takes a look back at an interview with Kyle from last year.

By Gil Aegerter and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

A former Navy SEAL who wrote "American Sniper," a best-selling book about his lethal career as a marksman in Iraq, was shot to death with another man at a gun range near Stephenville, Texas, on Saturday.

Chris Kyle, 38, and the other man were found dead at the shooting range of Rough Creek Lodge on Saturday afternoon, Texas Highway Patrol spokesman Lonny Haschel told KXAS.

The gunman, identified as Eddie Ray Routh of Lancaster, Texas, was arrested after a brief pursuit, Trooper Haschel said. The other victim was named as Chad Littlefield, aged 35.

Routh, 25, was arraigned Saturday night on two counts of capital murder, said Haschel.

Officer Kyle Roberts at the Erath County Jail told the Associated Press that Routh arrived there Sunday morning and was being held on a combined $3 million bond. Roberts did not have information on whether Routh had a lawyer.

Capt. Jason Upshaw of the Erath County Sheriff's Office said Routh used a semi-automatic handgun, which authorities later found at his home, the Associated Press reported.

Routh is in the Marine Corps Individual Ready Reserve, a U.S. military official confirmed. As such, he is not active or drilling with a unit.

Routh's service record shows that he was an armorer with the rank of corporal and served from June 2006 to January 2010. He was deployed three times -- to Iraq, various locations in Europe and the Middle East, and to Haiti.

Kyle, a Texas native who grew up hunting, served four tours in Iraq with Navy SEAL Team 3. His shooting during battles in Ramadi and Fallujah became legendary, and insurgents nicknamed him the "Devil of Ramadi" and put a bounty on his head.

He was credited with 160 confirmed kills, including one in 2008 in which he said he fired from 2,100 yards away -- 1.2 miles.

The Star-Telegram described him as "America's deadliest sniper."

Haschel said Routh is believed to have shot the victims at around 3:30 p.m. local time (4:30 p.m. ET) before leaving the shooting range and returning to his home in Lancaster in a Ford pickup truck. Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant said the truck belonged to Kyle.

Kyle and Littlefield had taken Routh to the range, said Travis Cox, the director of a nonprofit Kyle helped found. Littlefield was Kyle's neighbor and "workout buddy," Cox told The Associated Press on Sunday morning.

"What I know is Chris and a gentleman — great guy, I knew him well, Chad Littlefield — took a veteran out shooting who was struggling with PTSD to try to assist him, try to help him, try to, you know, give him a helping hand, and he turned the gun on both of them, killing them," Cox told the AP.

Kyle's nonprofit, FITCO Cares, provides at-home fitness equipment for emotionally and physically wounded veterans.

NBCDFW.com
Chris Kyle was credited with 160 kills during his time as a Navy SEAL marksman.

Rough Creek Lodge is a resort and conference center about 90 miles southwest of Dallas and 24 miles southeast of Stephenville in the Texas Hill Country. Lancaster is just south of Dallas.

In a February 2012 interview with NBC News, Kyle said he didn’t want to put the number of kills in the book but the publisher insisted.

“If I could figure out the number of people I saved, that’s something I would brag about,” he told NBC News' Lester Holt.

After leaving the Navy, Kyle founded Craft International, which provides training to military, police, corporate and civilian clients, Reuters said.

"It just comes as a shock and it's staggering to think that after all Chris has been through, that this is how he meets his end, because there are so many ways he could have been killed" in Iraq, Scott McEwen, who co-wrote "American Sniper," told Reuters.

Kyle appeared on the NBC reality TV show "Stars Earn Stripes" last year.

Kyle was married with two children.

Malala, girls' rights activist, undergoes successful surgery to reconstruct skull

By Kate Kelland, Reuters

LONDON – Days after she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, a Pakistani schoolgirl who had been shot in the head by the Taliban underwent a successful surgery at a British hospital to reconstruct her skull and help her to restore her hearing.

A team of doctors carried out a five-hour operation on Saturday on 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai, who was shot in October and brought to Britain for treatment.

The procedures carried out were cranial reconstruction, aimed at mending parts of her skull with a titanium plate, and a cochlear implant designed to restore hearing on her left side, which was damaged in the attack.

Slideshow: Schoolgirl attacked by Taliban in Pakistan

Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai was shot by the Taliban for speaking out against Pakistani militants and promoting education for girls.

"Both operations were a success and Malala is now recovering in hospital," said a statement on Sunday from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, where she is being treated.

The girl's condition was described as stable and the statement said her medical team were very pleased with the progress she has made. "She is awake and talking to staff and members of her family," it added.

The attack on Yousufzai, who was shot in the head at point blank range as she left school in the Swat valley, drew widespread international condemnation. The Taliban had targeted her for her outspoken advocacy of girls’ education. She had written a column about her daily life at school for the BBC.

She has become an international symbol of resistance to the Taliban's efforts to deny women education and other rights, and more than 250,000 people have signed online petitions calling for her to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yousufzai will now continue recuperating at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, which has a specialist unit where doctors have treated hundreds of soldiers wounded in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the hospital statement said.

Related:
Malala, teen champion of girls' rights, nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Video: Next hurdle for Malala after Taliban attack: Skull surgery
Video: Outpouring of support for Pakistani teen attacked by Taliban

Hospital's mistake leaves single Brooklyn mom with 6 months to live

EXCLUSIVE: When Laverne Wilkinson first felt chest pains, the Kings County Hospital doctor told her to take Motrin. But the doctor failed to tell her that her chest X-ray, in fact, showed a suspicious, 2-centimeter nodule in Wilkinson’s right lung.

By Heidi Evans / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Sunday, January 6, 2013, 2:00 AM

Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News

Laverne Wilkinson went to the hospital in 2010, believing she was having heart attack. Despite X-ray showing suspicous nodule in her lung, she was told to go home and take pain medication. Now, she has has lung cancer that has spread to brain and spine.

On the morning of Feb. 2, 2010, Laverne Wilkinson was suddenly seized with chest pain while cleaning her apartment.

The single mom made her way by bus to Kings County Hospital, stricken with the fear she was having a heart attack. Doctors in the busy emergency department ordered an EKG and chest X-ray — and gave her a clean bill of health.

First-year resident Dr. James Willis assured Wilkinson that her tests were normal.

“You should take Motrin for pain, and follow up with your doctor,” Willis wrote on her chart.

He was dead wrong.

The chest X-ray, in fact, showed a suspicious, 2-centimeter nodule in Wilkinson’s right lung. The radiologist had recommended in his written report that Wilkinson have a followup X-ray in three months, and if “clinical concern warrants, a CT scan is suggested.”

Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News

Laverne Wilkinson

But Wilkinson was never given this information. Not that winter day in 2010. Not during two years of followup clinic appointments, during which she complained of a chronic cough. Not from her primary care clinic doctors at Kings County.

When Wilkinson returned to the ER in spring 2012 — wheezing and short of breath — a new chest X-ray was taken. It showed the nodule was cancerous, had more than doubled in size and spread to her left lung.

Now the diagnosis was Stage 4 lung cancer — and it had metastasized to her liver, spine and brain.

As Wilkinson’s lung cancer galloped unchecked for more than two years, Kings County doctors botched her care, offering her cough medicines, inhalers and steroids in the blind belief that her ailments were caused by her longstanding asthma.

“I was shocked. I was told I had six months to a year to live,” the former home health aide told the Daily News in an emotional interview in her public housing apartment in Brooklyn.

Breaking down in tears as she spoke about her only child, a severely retarded and autistic 15-year-old daughter, Wilkinson sobbed, “She is going to be left without a mother. What is going to happen to my little girl?”

As if a diagnosis of terminal metastatic cancer wasn’t horrible enough, there was one more bombshell to be dropped on Wilkinson — she probably could have been cured.

Dr. Gary Briefel, the attending physician on call when Wilkinson was in the hospital in May 2012, broke the stunning news to her about the findings on the February 2010 chest X-ray, and that she had a chance to live.

Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News

Laverne Wilkinson (seated center), at church with (left to right) Valerie Thompson, Angie Hansen, Linsey Morris, Kim Call and Mara Kofoed.

His shockingly candid chart note of May 18, 2012, written after a bedside visit, said it all:

“I spoke to the patient about the fact that she had a chest X-ray in Feb 2010 while she was in the ED that showed a nodule that probably represented an earlier stage of what we now know is Squamous Cell Cancer,” Briefel wrote.

“I told her that apparently nobody saw the report, which suggested either repeating the X-ray or getting a CT scan. I told her that it was not clear whether earlier diagnosis would have led to a cure, since many lung cancers by the time they are seen on a CXR (chest X-ray) have already spread, but that it was possible that a surgical cure could have been achieved.”

Wilkinson recalled the doctor giving her a hug and apologizing.

Reached at home by The News, Briefel said he remembered Wilkinson vividly, but he was not at liberty to talk without the hospital’s permission.

“Everyone felt terrible about what has happened,” said Briefel, who did the honorable thing of documenting the error in her chart.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation — which oversees Kings County Hospital — declined comment, citing possible litigation.

“It’s mortifying,” said Judith Donnel, Wilkinson’s attorney. “No one looked at the radiology report for more than two years. And over those same two years, her primary care doctors at Kings County clinics ordered all these drugs that were breathing-related but never ordered another chest X-ray or pulmonary-function test. Her life could have been saved.”

Donnel has filed a Notice of Claim, the first step in a potential lawsuit against the city. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 25. The claim seeks monetary damages for severe injuries, pain and suffering inflicted upon Wilkinson “as a result of the carelessness, recklessness, negligence and medical malpractice” at Kings County Hospital.

Emergency Room doctors tell Brooklyn mom her chest x-ray was normal and sent her home.

Indeed, lung cancer experts say patients such as Wilkinson — nonsmokers with a 2-centimeter “squamous, nonsmall cell cancer” — have a good chance of being cured with surgery.

“If you find a lung cancer early, before it has invaded lymph nodes, the cure rate is 75%,” said Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at the Yale School of Medicine. “Once it spreads, a cure doesn’t exist.”

Wilkinson, now 41, is growing weaker. She told The News her head and back often hurt, and she is not able to do as much as she did before the cancer spread. Just last week, she was hospitalized for five days for a blood clot that developed in her lung.

With very little family in the city, she is sustained by one aunt and members of her church, who have taken her and her daughter, Micalia, under their wing.

It was a church member, a tax professor at Brooklyn Law School, who suggested she speak with a medical malpractice lawyer when he learned of Wilkinson’s plight.

“I am just going to say there is no amount of money in the world,” Wilkinson said, her voice cracking with emotion. “If someone was to give me a choice between having money or having my life back and my health back, I would choose my health and having my life back for the sake of this beautiful, little girl.

“Doctors need to be more careful and realize they have the lives of their patients in their hands,” she added. “They are human and do make mistakes. If it were a mistake where I was going to lose a lung and still live, then I could deal with that.”

But Wilkinson wasn’t given that chance.

 

“We trust our doctors,” she said. “I think that’s where a lot of us go wrong, because we put this trust in them that if there is something going on with me, I will get the information and I will be sent for followup care.”

Now, as she measures her days, Wilkinson thinks only of the girl she has devoted her entire life to. Micalia doesn’t speak, and is a physical handful as she gets older and stronger. She is dependent on her mother for every aspect of her life. Wilkinson said she has appointed a guardian for Micalia, but church friends say she worries her daughter may end up in an institution without her round-the-clock devotion and singular love.

Wilkinson’s great source of comfort has been the congregation at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Park Slope. One member, Mara Kofoed, has known her for 10 years. Along with other congregants, she has accompanied Wilkinson to her chemotherapy treatments in hopes of slowing the disease, and has brought the family dinner as Wilkinson struggles with her health.

“Laverne is just one of the most loving people I ever met,” said Kofoed, 35, as the two shared a warm moment at a recent Christmas church service. “She is incredibly patient, just loves her daughter to no end. That woman is full of wisdom, and strength and peace.

“What has happened to her is heart-wrenching. It’s heartbreaking to think of her having to let go of Micalia.”

Wilkinson said she decided to go public with her tragedy to “help prevent this from ever happening to anyone else.” Looking sullen and resigned, she added, “This may be my last Christmas with my daughter.”

Reviewing Wilkinson’s medical records, it is unclear how many doctors failed her and how such a lethal lapse could have happened. What is clear is that the ER’s first-year resident Willis — and the attending Dr. Antonia Quinn — told Wilkinson she was fine and discharged her around noon on Feb. 2, 2010. Radiologist resident Dr. Driss Raissi and attending Dr. Russell Areman’s final report documenting the nodule in her right lung was written at 2 p.m. — two hours after Wilkinson went home.

In his May 18, 2012, chart note, written after his bedside visit with Wilkinson, Dr. Briefel promised a shattered Wilkinson that a thorough review of her case would be undertaken “with the goal of finding ways to improve how we provide care and that the hospital would let her know the results of the investigation.”

It has been nearly eight months. Wilkinson has never heard a word from administrators or doctors at Kings County Hospital.
hevans@nydailynews.com

Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News

Dr. Gary Briefel, an attending doctor at King's County Hospital, discovered medical mistakes and tells Wilkinson the tragic truth that her X-ray report from 2010 was never seen. Briefel documents the error in Wilkinson's chart.

 

Comments (237)

Carol Davis6 days ago

Reality #1. Doctors make mistakes. We put them in a position of high accountability, as we should. But this was a 1st year Intern, keep that in mind. Responsibility was in the hands of the attending veteren physicians and medical director.
Reality #2. Always, always get a second opinion. If you're not comfortable with the diagnosis, you have the right for 2nd, 3rd opinion. Follow your intuition
Reality #3. Research the medical facility you go to. What is their hospital ranking? Malpractice history, find out how low or high they score. There's the difference in quality when shopping for hospitals, they are not all equally competent.

Quality Assurance/Quality Control...what systems if any were implemented? Facilities with manual systems vs. digital patient medical records systems are much more prone for break down in their quality assurance systems. Obvisiously there was no "Abnormal results" logging system. Take for example a system which is completely manual. Lets say for example the person responsible to generate manual logs of abnormal pap smears, is unfamilair with the process, has poor training, or the printer experiences mechanical failure. While the reports were printing, the printer jams up. The resulting lab doesn't resend auto prints once they are generated. The abnormal paps for Jane Doe is generated but "electronically lost" in the printer, or slips behind the printer, or gets lost in the deep piles of paperwork that medical offices experience. The paper result is never printed and never filed in the patient's file=missed follow up for the patient, left untreated terminal cervical cancer.. Had this been an electronic Medical Patient system, the report is automatically sent to the patient's electronic medical record. The medical provider has instant access to it, and is one of the first reports they will review. There's an electronic paper trail for QA/QC. Patient abnormals are addressed with early intervention. I stay away from medical offices with paper medical charts, not worth the unending scenarios of simple human error and the breakdown of processes.

Part of the Healthcare Reform bill by Obama (which is strictly optional to medical facilities) is the HITECH Act of 2009

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the stimulus package referred to as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With provisions to promote meaningful use of health IT in an effort to improve the quality of American health care, this electronic medical records stimulus legislation designates $19.2 billion to fund the adoption of health IT.

My heart goes out to this brave mother and I can only hope for the best, that she beats all the odds, and does survive.

Carol Davis6 days ago

Reality #1. Doctors make mistakes. We put them in a position of high accountability, as we should. But this was a 1st year Intern, keep that in mind. Responsibility was in the hands of the attending veteren physicians and medical director.
Reality #2. Always, always get a second opinion. If you're not comfortable with the diagnosis, you have the right for 2nd, 3rd opinion. Follow your intuition
Reality #3. Research the medical facility you go to. What is their hospital ranking? Malpractice history, find out how low or high they score. There's the difference in quality when shopping for hospitals, they are not all equally competent.

Quality Assurance/Quality Control...what systems if any were implemented? Facilities with manual systems vs. digital patient medical records systems are much more prone for break down in their quality assurance systems. Obvisiously there was no "Abnormal results" logging system. Take for example a system which is completely manual. Lets say for example the person responsible to generate manual logs of abnormal pap smears, is unfamilair with the process, has poor training, or the printer experiences mechanical failure. While the reports were printing, the printer jams up. The resulting lab doesn't resend auto prints once they are generated. The abnormal paps for Jane Doe is generated but "electronically lost" in the printer, or slips behind the printer, or gets lost in the deep piles of paperwork that medical offices experience. The paper result is never printed and never filed in the patient's file=missed follow up for the patient, left untreated terminal cervical cancer.. Had this been an electronic Medical Patient system, the report is automatically sent to the patient's electronic medical record. The medical provider has instant access to it, and is one of the first reports they will review. There's an electronic paper trail for QA/QC. Patient abnormals are addressed with early intervention. I stay away from medical offices with paper medical charts, not worth the unending scenarios of simple human error and the breakdown of processes.

Part of the Healthcare Reform bill by Obama (which is strictly optional to medical facilities) is the HITECH Act of 2009

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the stimulus package referred to as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With provisions to promote meaningful use of health IT in an effort to improve the quality of American health care, this electronic medical records stimulus legislation designates $19.2 billion to fund the adoption of health IT.

My heart goes out to this brave mother and I can only hope for the best, that she beats all the odds, and does survive.

Carol Davis6 days ago

Reality #1. Doctors make mistakes. We put them in a position of high accountability, as we should. But this was a 1st year Intern, keep that in mind. Responsibility was in the hands of the attending veteren physicians and medical director.
Reality #2. Always, always get a second opinion. If you're not comfortable with the diagnosis, you have the right for 2nd, 3rd opinion. Follow your intuition
Reality #3. Research the medical facility you go to. What is their hospital ranking? Malpractice history, find out how low or high they score. There's the difference in quality when shopping for hospitals, they are not all equally competent.

Quality Assurance/Quality Control...what systems if any were implemented? Facilities with manual systems vs. digital patient medical records systems are much more prone for break down in their quality assurance systems. Obvisiously there was no "Abnormal results" logging system. Take for example a system which is completely manual. Lets say for example the person responsible to generate manual logs of abnormal pap smears, is unfamilair with the process, has poor training, or the printer experiences mechanical failure. While the reports were printing, the printer jams up. The resulting lab doesn't resend auto prints once they are generated. The abnormal paps for Jane Doe is generated but "electronically lost" in the printer, or slips behind the printer, or gets lost in the deep piles of paperwork that medical offices experience. The paper result is never printed and never filed in the patient's file=missed follow up for the patient, left untreated terminal cervical cancer.. Had this been an electronic Medical Patient system, the report is automatically sent to the patient's electronic medical record. The medical provider has instant access to it, and is one of the first reports they will review. There's an electronic paper trail for QA/QC. Patient abnormals are addressed with early intervention. I stay away from medical offices with paper medical charts, not worth the unending scenarios of simple human error and the breakdown of processes.

Part of the Healthcare Reform bill by Obama (which is strictly optional to medical facilities) is the HITECH Act of 2009

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the stimulus package referred to as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With provisions to promote meaningful use of health IT in an effort to improve the quality of American health care, this electronic medical records stimulus legislation designates $19.2 billion to fund the adoption of health IT.

My heart goes out to this brave mother and I can only hope for the best, that she beats all the odds, and does survive.

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Police: Florida mom forced to watch estranged husband kill their sons

View more videos at: http://nbcmiami.com.

By Gilma Avalos and Juan Ortega, NBC Miami

A South Florida man strangled his two young sons with a rope at his estranged wife’s house and then used a gun to shoot one of the boys several times before he shot himself to death, authorities said Saturday afternoon.
Police say Isidro Zavala, 45, early Saturday went to the Boynton Beach home of his wife with the intention of killing her and their children, Eduardo Zavala, 12, and Mario Zavala, 11.
At the crime scene, detectives found a blue bag with a second firearm, extra ammunition, duct tape, cutting shears and a note addressed to Zavala's oldest son, who was not at the residence during the killings, police said.
Isidro Zavala carried out his plan, but with an exception: He spared his wife, Victoria Flores Zavala, 36, so that she could suffer, police said.
“What Mrs. Zavala had to go through -- watch her children killed before her -- is probably the most horrific thing you could ever imagine, at least for me,” said Boynton Beach Police Chief G. Matthew Immler, saying that he himself is a parent.
The motive for the killing "is just speculation at this point," Immler said.
Victoria Flores Zavala contacted police, who arrived at her house in the 400 block of Southwest Eighth Avenue about 1:50 a.m. Saturday.
Officers found one child dead in a back screened patio area. A second child was found dead in the kitchen dining room area. Officers found Isidro Zavala’s body in the kitchen, police said.
Victoria Zavala said that her husband killed their children, police said. She said she and her husband had been separated from her for some time and that he no longer lived in the house.
She told detectives that she was watching TV when she heard commotion in the house, went to check on her children and saw Isidro Zavala choking one of his sons, police said.
Then he killed them. Mario was the boy who was shot repeatedly, police said. The mother had tried to stop her spouse.
“She tried fighting him off and begged him to kill her and not the children,” Boynton Beach police spokeswoman Stephanie Slater said in a press release. “He told her she was going to stay alive and suffer the loss of them.”
Detectives obtained a warrant to search the house, as well as a house in the 1100 block of Southeast Third Street, where Isidro Zavala had been living, police said.
The Zavalas have a 19-year-old son who does not live with his family and was not there when the killings occurred, police said. The note found at the crime scene addressed to him said something to the effect that "he was a good son," police said.
Detectives have called the state Department of Children and Families to investigate. “It should be noted that there is no history of reports of domestic violence or abuse noted at the house,” Slater said.
The Zavala couple married in 1993, records show. In 1999, the pair signed a $73,700 mortgage on the home where the killings occurred, Palm Beach County records show.
In October last year, Victoria Flores Zavala filed for divorce from her husband in Palm Beach County, a case that records showed was still listed as pending.
Immler called Saturday's case "an unusually brutal type of murder," but said such murder-suicide cases unfortunately have been known to happen.
"And certainly I’ve seen it over the years of being a police officer, that there are mentally disturbed people out there who commit these types against their own family members, against their own loved ones," he said.
The police chief turned his attention to the surviving Zavalas.
"Hopefully, as time passes, perhaps their wounds will heal. I doubt it," he said. "You know, I don’t believe you could ever recover from something like this.
"Hopefully, the surviving Zavalas can get the help they need and somehow go on with life."

4 retailers likely to close stores this year

STEPHEN LAM / Reuters

Best Buy has seen a 1.4 percent decline in same-store sales year over year.

Douglas A. McIntyre, Samuel Weigley, Alexander E.M. Hess and Michael B. Sauter , 24/7 Wall St.   –   6 hrs.

It is the time of year again when America’s largest retailers release those critical holiday season figures and disclose their annual sales. A review of these numbers tells us a great deal about how most of the companies will do in the upcoming year. And while successful retailers in 2012 may add stores this year, those that have performed very poorly may have to cut locations during 2013 to improve margins or reverse losses.
For many retailers, the sales situation is so bad that it is not a question of whether they will cut stores, but when and how many. Most recently, Barnes & Noble Inc. decided it had too many stores to maintain profits. Its CEO recently said he plans to close as many as a third of the company’s locations.
24/7 Wall St.: The 10 Most Hated Companies in America
Several of America’s largest retailers have been battered for years. Most have been undermined by a combination of e-commerce competition, often from Amazon.com Inc. and more successful retailers in the same areas. Borders and Circuit City are two of the best examples of retailers that were destroyed by larger bricks-and-mortar competition and consumers transitioning to online shopping. These large, badly damaged retailers could not possibly keep their stores open.
Currently, the best example of a struggling retailer is J.C. Penney Co. Inc. The department store chain's third-quarter revenue dropped more than 26 percent year-over-year, and its same-store sales fell by about the same. With J.C. Penney’s e-commerce sales slipping by an ever greater amount, it was left with nowhere to go for bottom line improvement other than deep cost cuts.
Store closings can bring a retailer some relief and may not always portend its demise. Gap announced in 2011 it would shutter 21 percent of its U.S. store base. It has since transformed itself into a much more successful clothing retailer. As the retailer completes the process of downsizing, its store operations likely will become even more efficient and its margins greater.
Very few retailers get into sudden trouble. Chains like Kmart and RadioShack Corp. have struggled for years just to stay in place. Their brands have lost much of their luster. Their stores have become old and their locations no longer attractive. The consumer’s perception is that the products they sell can be found elsewhere, usually at a cheaper price, and at retailers with better customers service and wider selections of products.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed the weakest large U.S. retailers and picked those that likely will not be profitable next year if they keep their current location counts. 24/7 analyzed the retailers' store counts, recent financial data, online presences, prospects against direct competitors and precedents set by other large retailers that have downsized by shuttering locations. We then forecast how many stores each retailer will have to close this year to sharply increase its prospects financially, even if some of those location closings do not occur for several years. These forecasts were based on drops in same-store sales, drops in revenue, a review of direct competitors, Internet sales and the size of cuts at retailers in the same sector, if those were available.
These are the retailers that will close the most stores in 2013.
24/7 Wall St.: The Most Valuable Actors of All Time
1. Best Buy
· Forecast store closings: 200 to 250
· Number of U.S. stores:1,056
· One-year stock performance: -36.8 percent
The holiday season was rough for Best Buy Co. Inc. Same-store sales declined by 1.4 percent year-over-year, with international stores posting a 6.4 percent decline while U.S. same-store sales were flat. Companywide, the electronics retailer reported that holiday revenue had declined to $12.8 billion from $12.9 billion the year before. In the most recent completed quarter, during which same-store sales declined 4.3 percent, the company reported a loss of $0.04 per share. Best Buy has been plagued by customers “showrooming” -- looking at products in the store and then purchasing them online -- in recent years. Speculation persists that former chairman and founder Richard Schulze may buy out the company.
Related: Best Buy to close 15 stores in Canada
2. Barnes & Noble
· Forecast store closings: 190 to 240, per company comments
· Number of U.S. stores: 689
· One-year stock performance: 8.95 percent
The move by customers away from print books toward digital books has hurt Barnes & Noble Inc.. Same-store sales during the nine-week holiday season fell by 8.2 percent year-over-year. The bookseller has tried to offset the declines in physical book sales with its Nook e-book reader device, but sales of that device fell 13 percent compared to the previous year. The company already has begun cutting down the number of its stores in the past several years. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the head of the retail group at Barnes & Noble said he expected the company to have just 450 to 500 retail stores in 10 years.
24/7 Wall St.: America's Most Misleading Product Claims
3. Sears Holding Corp.
· Forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125
· Number of U.S. stores: 2,118
· One-year stock performance: 8.8 percent
Both Sears and Kmart have been going down the tubes for a long time, steadily losing their middle-income shoppers to retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. Sears Holdings Corp.'s same-store sales have declined for six years. In the most recent year, same-store sales at the namesake franchise fell by 1.6 percent and at Kmart by 3.7 percent, compared to the year-ago period. The company is already in the process of downsizing its brick-and-mortar presence. In 2012, Sears announced it was shutting 172 stores. CEO Lou D’Ambrosio is leaving the company in February, to be replaced by chairman and hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert. Lampert has minimal operating experience in retail management.
4. J.C. Penney
· Forecast store closings: 300 to 350
· Number of U.S. stores: 1,100
· One-year stock performance: -53.6 percent
J.C. Penney has gone through a rough stretch recently. In the most recent quarter, same-store sales fell by 26.1 percent compared to the year-ago period. Even Internet sales, which are increasing significantly across the retail sector, have taken a turn for the worst, falling 37.3 percent in the third quarter, compared to the prior year. J.C. Penney sales have taken a turn for the worst since former Apple Inc. retail chief Ron Johnson took the helm at the company. Johnson’s plan, among others, has been to wean customers off of heavy discounting and simply give customers low prices. However, retail strategists and analysts have argued that Johnson’s plans have created confusion among customers and has been a further setback to any potential turnaround.
Click here to read the rest of 24/7 Wall St.'s Retailers That Will Close the Most Stores
©2013 24/7 Wall St.

Alabama hostage crisis day 4: Confused 5-year-old hostage cries for his parents as stand-off continues in underground bunker by ‘loner’

Held hostage by an Alabama man inside an underground bunker since being snatched off a school bus at gunpoint, the 5-year-old kidnapping victim is said to be “crying for his parents.” The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team has been negotiating with suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes for the boy’s release through a 60-foot PVC air tube.

Comments (96)

By David Knowles / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, February 1, 2013, 5:53 PM

FOX News

An artist's rendering of the underground bunker where Midland City resident Jimmy Lee Dyke has been holding a 5-year-old boy hostage since Tuesday afternoon.

Ethan, the 5-year-old boy held hostage for the past three days in a deranged Alabama man’s underground bunker, just wants to go home.

“He's crying for his parents,” Midland City Mayor Virgil Skipper said of the kindergartener who was pulled off a school bus on Tuesday afternoon by Jimmy Lee Dykes.

Dykes, 65, had boarded the bus carrying a shotgun and demanded that two boys, ages 6 and 8, come with him. Dykes shot and killed the driver of the bus, 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland, Jr., when he tried to intervene.
In the ensuing chaos, 20 of the 21 children were able to escape, but Dykes was able to grab Ethan and take him to a 6’-by-8’ underground room, similar to a tornado shelter, located on his property just outside of Midland City.

Many in the tiny town are at a loss as to why Dykes, who has been described by neighbors as a surly recluse, would do such a thing, including the victim himself.

AP Photo

Law enforcement officials continue to work the scene of an ongoing hostage crisis in Midland City, Ala. 

“He [Ethan] does not know what is going on,” Skipper told ABC News. “Let this kid go.”


Negotiators with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team have been communicating with Dykes through a 60-foot PVC air pipe leading to the bunker. Ethan, police said, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD, and, so far, they have been delivering his medication through the 4-inch wide air pipe.
Still, neither the FBI, nor local law enforcement have stated what possible motive the retired truck driver had for plucking Ethan off the bus and taking him captive.

“I cannot even fathom the whys or anything like that,” Ronda Wilbur, who lives just across a dirt road from Dykes told ABCNews.com. “I know that he has totally and completely no regard for human life, or any sort of life.”

AP Photo

Negotiators with the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team have been talking with Jimmy Lee Dykes through a 60-foot PVC air tube. 

Police say there is no reason to believe that Ethan has been harmed, a thought that gives his parents some small amount of comfort as the hours continue to pass.

“They are holding up good,” Skipper told reporters. “They are praying and asking all of us to pray with them.”

After meeting with Ethan’s family however, Rep. Steve Clouse, told AL.com that the boy’s mother was “hanging on by a thread.”

RELATED: NEIGHBORS DESCRIBE ALA. GUNMAN AS VOLATILE LONER

A disturbing picture has emerged of Dykes since the standoff began. Neighbors describe a hot-headed loner who would patrol his property at night with a flashlight and an assault rifle.

AP Photo

Local, state, and federal law enforcement have flooded the tiny town of Midland City, Ala. to try and rescue the 5-year-old kindergarten student from the bunker owned by Jimmy Lee Dykes. 

Dykes faced a court date on Wednesday on charges that the shot at a neighbor Claudia Davis, her son, and grandson after they damaged a makeshift speed bump set up by Dykes as they drove over it in their pickup truck.

Brock Parrish, who lives across the street from the suspect, said Dykes struck a hunched-over posture as he patrolled his property in overalls and glasses, and drove a run-down van with the windows covered in aluminium foil, AL.com reported.

“He's against the government — starting with Obama on down,” James Arrington, police chief of the neighboring town of Pinckard, told reporters.

“He doesn't like law enforcement or the government telling him what to do. He's just a loner.”

Police said Dykes’ bunker was stocked with food, water and a television.

“He will have to give up sooner or later because (authorities) are not leaving,” Arrington said. “It's pretty small, but he's been known to stay in there eight days.”

--With News Wire Services

After Superstorm Sandy, seniors forced to start over

David Friedman / NBC News
Kathleen Campbell, 85, stays with her daughter's family in Hawthorne, N.Y., while she is displaced from her home in Breezy Point. Campbell's daughter Ann Marie Pawlowicz, and granddaughters Kalina, 16, and Julia, 8, play with the family dog in the background.

 

By Maggie Fox, Senior Writer, NBC News

Kathleen Campbell has had a bad night. It’s nothing a cup of fresh brewed tea won’t fix, but Campbell, 85, likely faces many more less-than-comfortable nights on her daughter’s living room sofa.

Just three months ago, Campbell was riding her three-wheeled cycle on the smooth and level streets of Breezy Point, a cheerful and close-knit community at the far end of the islands called the Rockaways in Queens. Now she is shuttling among three houses – her daughter Ann Marie Pawlowicz’s 1890s home in Westchester, N.Y., another daughter in New Jersey and her sister’s home near Philadelphia.

Campbell’s lifestyle is one of the many casualties of Superstorm Sandy, which sent floodwaters surging through homes when it hit Oct. 29, damaging more than 2,000 homes and starting a fire that burned more than 100 houses to the ground. The beachfront village, whose population plummeted from 12,000 in the summer to around 4,000 the rest of the year, provided a way of life not often seen in the sprawling suburbs of most cities. Generations of the same family jealously guarded their modest homes, and they took care of their own.

Like so many other elderly residents there, Campbell could “age in place”, living alone after her husband died in 2009, despite a heart condition and the onset of what might be dementia. It’s a concept that many communities have embraced, and that groups like the AARP and the National Council of State Legislatures are encouraging. When people age in place, they stay in their homes, perhaps adapting them for more limited mobility, rather than moving to elder care facilities. And it’s a way of life that seems to have just evolved naturally in Breezy Point.

“It’s not uncommon to have three generations living within blocks of each other. It did offer that kind of stability and smalltown closeness,”says Msgr. Michael Curran of St. Thomas More Catholic Church, the main church on Breezy Point’s main drag and one of the places residents sheltered during the height of the storm.

Campbell’s house on Reid Avenue was completely flooded when Sandy hit. “It was like the ocean meeting the bay in your living room,” says Pawlowicz.

The house, which Campbell's late husband, Charlie, built in 1990, is on the first road to the left as you enter Breezy Point. Shelves at her house, filled with carefully catalogued photo albums, were soaked when the floodwaters filled the home. Campbell lost almost everything but the small suitcase she took with her when she fled to Pawlowicz’s home to wait out the storm.

Courtesy of Ann Marie Pawlowicz
Kathleen Campbell rides her tricycle in Breezy Point, N.Y., on Sept. 27, 2012.

Campbell was once a fixture of the community as she rode up and down the narrow alleys on her tricycle. Now it sits rusting in her empty, mudstained house.

The Westchester hamlet of Hawthorne where Pawlowicz lives doesn’t have many level streets. Its Victorian, Craftsman and Care Cod homes are tiered one above another along streets built into a steep, rocky hillside.

“I miss riding my tricycle,” says Campbell in a soft Irish accent. “I was on it twice a day.”

Although Campbell is clearly enveloped in the loving arms of her family, her independence is gone. “She felt safe,” Pawlowicz says. “Even though she has a touch of memory issues.” She sleeps on the sofa because she is uncomfortable with stairs.

Within walking distance to many Breezy Point homes in the 500-acre cooperative were a bank, auto repair shop, the Blarney Castle pub and Deirdre Maeve's Supermarket and, perhaps most important for Campbell, St. Thomas More Church. Most remain damaged and closed months after the disaster.

Breezy Point had naturally what states like Georgia and New Jersey have been spending money to develop – safe, walkable neighborhoods with homes friendly to arthritic bodies.

A survey AARP did in 2008 of Americans over age 50 showed more than half would like to walk, bike or use public transportation, but nearly 40 percent complained about a lack of sidewalks and safe crossings, bicycle lanes or safe places to catch the bus near their homes.

'A hidden little gem'
At Breezy Point, three of Campbell's cousins and a neighbor used to regularly look in on her, making sure she ate her meals and keeping her company. Now they're all displaced too.

David Friedman / NBC News file
Veets Pawlowicz, second from right, is aided by a gang of family, friends and even volunteering strangers as they clean up his mother-in-law Kathleen Campbell's house on Nov. 2, 2012, in Breezy Point.

“I feel like a lot of the neighbors looked out for each other. It was a very simple life. It was great,” Pawlowicz adds as she sets a cup of tea in front of her mother. “It’s all gone now.”

Pawlowicz, 41 and the mother of two girls aged 8 and 16, finds herself a member of the “sandwich generation” – trying to juggle her job as a nurse with raising children and caring for an elderly parent. On weekends she and her husband, Witold, make the hour-long drive to Breezy Point to try to rip out drywall and salvage what belongings they can in Campbell’s home. It’s not clear what it will take to rebuild.

“We have pumped out the basement like 35 times. Whatever happened with this storm, it shifted everything. Now it’s like it’s on a spring,” Pawlowicz says. Getting insurance sorted out has been a chore for many Breezy Point owners.

“I haven’t been back to see it yet. Please, God, let’s get back there,” Campbell says.

“Not now, Mom,” Pawlowicz answers gently. “It’s a ghost town.”

The seaside neighborhoods in the Rockaways are among the last to recover from Sandy. Breezy Point is nowhere close to being back to normal. Empty foundations yawn open on the blocks that burned. Elsewhere, houses remain shifted off their foundations. There is still no electricity, so almost everyone clears out as the sun sets. Breezy Point is the last New York neighborhood left without clean water.

Like Campbell, many long to go back home. But for seniors, that will be especially hard, even with family support. “It is going to be tough for an elderly person living alone in a badly damaged home to get that home restored,” says New York’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley.

Curran tries to remain in touch with the seniors who are now scattered to new homes. They're resilient, he says, but "late in life it’s a big adjustment that folks are making.”

Just as they found their own solution when the community was whole, the elderly of Breezy Point have found their own solutions to being homeless. “Most people were able to find a family member or a friend they could move in with and have their needs met,” says Curran, who now commutes himself to attend to his duties at St. Thomas More.

Many families don’t want to talk publicly any more about their situations – a man who moved his elderly father to Dallas, a family who brought their aging parents to Long Island. “I was just talking to a couple – they took their parents in, they are safe,” says Curran. “But they are 85-plus and this is the first time they have ever lived in an apartment.”

Campbell misses the beach, but she doesn’t complain. “We’re on top of the hill,” she says, smiling as she gazes around her daughter’s antique-filled home. “It’s beautiful.” But she mentions again that she misses her tricycle.

“I always say everyone should have a touch of dementia during a disaster,” says Pawlowicz. “The best thing about dementia – my mother laughs. We have been able to cry a little bit, but nobody died.”

Related stories:

• Sandy-struck Breezy Point facing 'greatest historical challenge'
• Confusion in the storm: Alzheimer's patient refused to evacuate
• Elderly sisters find time to laugh after Sandy
• Temporary housing will never be the same post-Sandy

Hello Kitty says 'Hello, city!'

New York exhibit shows why she's the cat's meow to Betsey Johnson and her feline-loving fans

By Gina Salamone / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, December 13, 2012, 6:00 AM

Craig Warga/New York Daily News

Fashion legend Betsey Johnson shows off her original Hello Kitty-inspired artwork.

Hello Kitty is making the most of her nine lives.

Nearly four decades after the brand launched, the cool cat is more popular than ever, leaving fans of all ages purring for more.

An exhibit boasting art inspired by the pop culture icon, “Hello Kitty, Hello Art!,” opens Friday in Little Italy. It celebrates a new book of the same name. The fashion-conscious feline also has partnered with style and beauty brands like Sephora and Forever 21.

And she recently made her debut as a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“I love Hello Kitty,” gushes designer Betsey Johnson, one of 45 artists whose Kitty-themed pieces will be on display at Openhouse Gallery on Broome St. Friday through Sunday. “She’s fun, accessible, global - absolutely established worldwide. Everybody knows Hello Kitty.”

New York Daily News

Marie Moss and her daughter, Mazie, 11, are surrounded by their Hello Kitty collectables.

And she means everyone. Created in 1974 by Japanese company Sanrio, Hello Kitty has held onto original fans, while charming new ones.

“Me, my daughter, now my two granddaughters - ages 6 and 4 - are all massive Hello Kitty fans,” Johnson says. “Princesses come and go, but Hello Kitty is an absolute constant.

“There’s something so sweet and loving about her,” she adds. “She’s ageless, timeless, non-threatening. It’s simple and adorable.”

Her grandkids sport Hello Kitty pajamas and wear Sanrio backpacks to school, and Johnson remembers buying products for their mom.

“But I would always buy Hello Kitty just as much for myself as my child,” Johnson admits.

The exhibit follows the fall release of “Hello Kitty, Hello Art!,” a book celebrating Sanrio characters through interpretations by various artists.

Johnson jumped at the chance to draw Hello Kitty for the exhibit. Her first attempt turned out to be too personal, so Sanrio chose another piece Johnson originally made as a thank-you note.

New York Daily News

A display of some of Marie and Mazie Moss' Hello Kitty souvenirs in their apartment

“This took me about eight minutes,” she says of her Sharpie-sketched Hello Kitty. “That’s one of my little iconic sweetheart neckline, puffy tutu dresses, with little fingerless gloves. And high heels of course.”

For the finishing touch, she kissed Hello Kitty’s face, adding a lipstick imprint of her own mouth.

Other artists taking part in the exhibit include Paul Frank and graffiti artist POSE.

“The exhibition really targets our adult fanbase, which is very significant in the world and in the U.S.,” says Sanrio President Janet Hsu.

“[Hello Kitty] has a very wide appeal because of her Zen-like disposition,” adds Hsu. “She’s been very relevant. She’s always transforming and changing with how the world is changing. She’s such a lifestyle brand, it’s not only about the T-shirt or pencil.”

Many fans who loved the character as kids grew up into adult Kitty collectors. Ariel McClellan’s obsession with the Sanrio star was sparked as a toddler when her aunt gave her a stuffed Kitty.

Now 26, her Hell’s Kitchen pad is packed with Hello Kitty figures, clocks, purses and portraits.

“I grew up with Hello Kitty and now there are so many things that are adult products, so I just transitioned into adulthood and so has the Hello Kitty marketing,” McClellan says.

She has the Sephora makeup kits and Forever 21 T-shirts and pajamas.

Susan Watts/New York Daily News

Ariel McClellan says Hello Kitty's popularity is 'out of control right now.'

A longtime fan, she’s noticed Hello Kitty is bigger than ever. “It’s out of control right now,” McClellan says. “I walked into a gas station where you wouldn’t expect to find anything, and there’s something Hello Kitty on the wall.”

Marie Moss, 50, was a huge Hello Kitty fan before Sanrio asked the former Seventeen magazine fashion director to write four books about her.

Moss’ Sanrio infatuation began when she was in high school in New Jersey.

“She always kept up with what was trendy,” she notes. “If in fashion, stripes were happening or nautical or flowers, Hello Kitty was reinvented to go with those trends.”

Now, she shares her love of the character with daughter Maisy, 11. The young upper East Sider has a simpler reason for being a fan.

“She’s always happy and colorful,” Maisy says. “I like things that can go in my pencil case for school, like Hello Kitty erasers and pencils. They always make me happy, especially during tests.”